The Power of Suggestion
by generationfire
Summary: Draco Malfoy has put the past behind him and is comfortable in his high ranking position in the Ministry. That is, until an old friend shows up and plants an idea into his head he just can't stop thinking about.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This story is canon compliant. All the departments listed are actual departments in Harry Potter. Where there was no information provided I made it up. This story is set in the future, around the same year Scorpius graduated. **

**Disclaimer: It's JK's world, I'm just living in it.**

"Isla! Where are you?"

A small, stout woman of around fifty poked her head around the door of Draco Malfoy's office. Her greying hair swung with the motion and settled itself back onto her shoulders as she replied,

"Isla was switched to the Minister for Magic's office. I've been trying to tell you this every day for the past week now - we need to hire new intern."

Draco looked up from the memo he was reading - some legal dribble about a case involving black market gillyweed he really couldn't care less about - and adjusted his reading glasses.

"Was she?" He looked puzzled for a moment, trying to remember when and why that change was made. It was a shame, he thought. She had been capable and efficient, and also rather pretty. "Well, why haven't we hired a new intern yet? Bring me a shortlist by the end of the day. This office is understaffed as it is."

The woman, Clare, sighed heavily and stalked over to his desk, pulling a file from underneath the mess of loose pages, interdepartmental memos and folders on his desk. "I already put one here two days ago, sir." With that, she briskly walked back out his office and to her own desk in the next room.

Draco rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and put the other memo out of his mind for a second. With a long-suffering sigh, he set to work on weeding through the dozen or so applicants chosen by Clare. Interning for Draco Malfoy, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, was a highly competitive position which meant everybody on the short list was either overqualified or hopelessly useless but well connected. He flipped through the pages, glancing at the names. Nott, Crabbe, Montague - old school friends of Draco's who were probably hoping that their former gang leader would give their child a nice, cushy start at the Ministry. After all, what better way to wipe out your past indiscretions by ensuring your child had a respectable job in law enforcement? Draco dismissed these applications quickly, as he preferred quality to connections, though there were certainly many other Heads whose staff lists read as a Who's Who of ancient wizarding families.

The following two applicants were actually qualified and had impressive grades, though the first was perhaps slightly too old for a temporary internship. The next name on the list made Draco stop and read for a minute. A Weasley. Rose Weasley. It took Draco a second to place her in the ever expanding Weasley clan. Daughter of Ron and Hermione, graduated Hogwarts last month. He vaguely remembered Scorpius mentioning her, as she had been in his year. Her transcripts were impressive - all O's in her O.W.L.s, and the same for her N.E.W.T.s. Joined various clubs in her time at Hogwarts, started something called the Society for the Better Understanding of Merpeople and their Culture. Why anyone would want to better understand Merpeople was a mystery to Draco, but the rest of her resume read like a completed checklist of all the requirements for this job, or even one several rungs higher, and after glancing at the other resumes he had to concede that she was the most qualified candidate. He felt a rush of joy in imagining Weasley's face when he found out his daughter would be working for his (ex-)archenemy, and then wrote a short note to the effect of 'Hire Rose Weasley' which he left on Clare's desk on his way out to lunch.

* * *

Lunch was a mind-numbing affair. Draco had to listen to a man named Piers Gatley, a junior staffer in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, who tried to lobby him to allocate more resources to their new project creatively titled 'Operation Remove-Bewitched-Kettles-From-Muggle-Homes.' The fact that _any_ funds had been allocated to this endeavour was a worry to Draco which he would surely rectify, but other than that he had no interest in anything to do with the MMAO. More than once he had tried to scrap the branch altogether, but the Minister had come back with some spiel about how it was necessary, not just to keep wizards and muggles out of harm's way but also to uphold the Statute etc. etc.

After assuring Gatley he would look into cutting the budget of another department to fund his ridiculous operation (read: he would never think about it again and would actively try to avoid these meetings in the future even if it meant never eating on Ministry premises again) Draco finally returned to his office - to find a young witch with bushy red hair, purple robes, a visitor's badge and more than a passing resemblance to Hermione Granger rifling through his documents. Draco stopped short and stared at the woman in surprise.

"Good afternoon, Mister Malfoy. I was just sorting some of the documents on your desk. The woman at your reception said I should take those papers and memos which seem too trivial for you, and deal with them myself."

She grabbed a final folder from his desk and stood up straight, brushing her bushy hair back from her face. She gave him a perfunctory smile and determinedly walked past him out of the door to find the cubicle formerly occupied by Isla.

Draco snapped out of his surprise as it dawned on him that a virtual stranger had just grabbed official government documents off his desk and was now going to _reply_ _to _and _sort_ them.

"Excuse me!" He hurried after Rose (Miss Weasley? No, Rose, he had called Isla Isla, though that was probably because he had no idea what her last name was. In fact, her first name might not even have been Isla. Maybe that's why she left.) and caught up with her just as she was about to enter her cubicle. "What do you think you're doing? Those are official department documents, regarding issues far beyond your understanding and experience!" He held out his hand as a clear sign for her to hand them back and go back to doing whatever interns usually did. Like getting coffee and running around the Ministry trying to find people for Draco to meet with/shout at/fire.

"Let's see, shall we?" Rose replied. She deposited the stack of documents onto her desk and grabbed the one on top. It was a fat file, emblazoned with the logo of the Administrative Registration Department. She skimmed the first page quickly. "This is a report on the fact that there has been a notable rise in Muggleborn witches and wizards in the past decade, and an extensive look into reason why." She looked him straight in the eye and sarcastically continued, "You're right, this is completely beyond my level of understanding."

Draco had to admit, a lot of the paperwork he had to deal with just seemed like busy work, reading pages and pages of departmental reports about studies and projects. It would be nice to have someone to go through that for him. However, he'd started this fight, and he wasn't going to admit defeat to a Weasley.

After ten minutes of lecturing her about her exactly how to deal with every single document she had grabbed, and another five minutes explaining to her (in detail) that she was to stick to departmental policy in her reply, and that what she wrote or did reflected on the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and by extension the Ministry itself, Draco returned to his desk satisfied that he had reasserted his position as Head of the department and that Rose Weasley knew exactly who was boss.

Until two minutes later, when he spilled tea all over his desk and had to ask her to help dry everything.

* * *

"How did she even get here this fast? I hired her this morning, and this afternoon she was already subverting the hierarchical structure of this office and doing my job for me," Draco grumbled. He was half-sitting on Clare's and staring in the direction of Rose's cubicle in a disgruntled way.

"Well, you told me to hire her and she was already in the building visiting her mother, so she came here immediately. I'm drafting her contract now, which would be a lot easier if you weren't sitting on it." She swatted at him with a file until he stood up so she could retrieve a stack of papers from under him.

"Might I ask what you are doing at my desk? You're the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, I imagine that job still has some importance, despite the fact that it's apparently easy enough for even _you_ to handle."

Draco turned to glare at her half-heartedly but he couldn't muster a full Malfoy-esque scowl. Clare was simply too old and nice. She was the only who could get away with speaking to him like that, but only because she'd known him for about ten years, back before he was a Head. She'd been working a clerical job at the Investigation Department when he'd joined as a junior staffer, and Draco had highly enjoyed her dry humour and how rude she was to other people. She was a great secretary, able to keep most of the nonsense issues and people out of Draco's office.

"I have very little left to do, except respond to idiotic interdepartmental memos, and you know how much I enjoy _those,_" he snarled, turning around to look at the rest of the office working in their cubicles again. "I wonder how much Kraks had to pay to get that position, considering the fact he has the mental facilities of a troll-"

"When I asked you why you were here, I didn't really want an answer. At least go be unproductive in your own office - you're scaring the junior staffers."

With a sigh, he heaved himself off her desk and trudged back into his office. Hopefully writing Kraks a memo detailing every single way Draco was superior to him would be enough to cheer him up.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: This chapter really does nothing for story development. Or character development. It's basically about a cloud. This story is obviously going really really well.

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.

Rose Weasley was not a happy Ministry employee. Not that she was, technically, officially working yet, as her contract had not been drafted, but she had high hopes for Ministry employment in her near future.

There was a cloud hanging over her. Not metaphorically. Literally. There was literally a cloud above her, indoors, alternating between hailing and raining in five minute intervals. Occasionally it would make a sound that was almost-but-not-quite like a hiccough, and Rose would almost find it kind of adorable, hanging all alone above the DMLE bullpen with in its wispy greyness, but then the hail would start again and the dark feelings of unhappiness returned.

At least it was not only _her_ desk that was being pelted with deadly balls of ice, like some terrible first-day-of-work-but-not-really hazing thing. She'd heard terrible stories about such happenings in the Improper Use of Magic offices, where her friend Hazel had recently started interning. Admittedly, the DMLE was considered a slightly more serious branch than the IUM, but she honestly would not have put it past Malfoy to try and wreak havoc on her technically-not-yet-first-day.

She had heard all kinds of stories about Malfoy from her parents, of course. Well, her father, mostly. And Uncle Harry. Also occasionally Aunt Ginny. Christmas was a particularly good time to pester her parents about stories from their (mostly) misspent youth. The combination of firewhiskey and holiday cheer made them chatty, and the youngest Weasleys would eagerly crowd around in the living room as their parents remembered the past.

_"Oi 'Mione-'" Ron paused for a moment to burp, then continued, "remember in our third year, when you punch that weasel-y git in the face?" He laughed uproariously, like the memory was especially funny to him. "Best moment of my life. Reckon I knew I loved you from that moment."_

_Somewhere from the corner of the room, Aunt Ginny was giggling, punching Harry in the arm 'Hey, hey, Harry, Weasel-y. Like Weasley. Get it? Weasley!' she dissolved into more giggles. Of course, Uncle Harry joined her, but to be fair, he'd drunk most of the butterbeer and would probably have laughed at anything Ginny said._

_Hermione had the decency to try to look ashamed, but her slight smirk undermined her appearance of guilt. "Shut up, Ronald, you're giving the children entirely the wrong idea about me."_

_Rose didn't bother to remind her mother that they'd heard the story of the Malfoy Punching every Christmas since could remember. It was a good story, and her father always got this manic look of glee in his eyes usually only reserved for Grandma Molly's huge dinners. Besides, she liked having these kinds of stories to hold over their heads when they tried to lecture her - not that she ever needed lecturing, really, but it was good to be prepared._

Rose was startled out of her memory by someone pushing past her to get to the cloud, presumably a new Hitwizard from the Magical Law Enforcement Squad desperate to prove his ability to solve a crisis. The boy stuck his wand in the air and wordlessly tried a spell. Whatever he cast obviously didn't work any better than anything the rest of the office had already tried, because the blue flash of light went from his wand straight into the cloud. In fact, if anything, the cloud seemed to have absorbed the spell, drawing power and mass from it, now looming dangerously close to Clare's desk. Clare had thrown herself bodily over her paperwork, desperate to keep it dry should the cloud come any closer. The sight was almost comical, if not for the very real threat of important government paperwork being destroyed. Her desperate wails for someone to just _do something! _were barely audible over the rumble of thunder now coming from within the cloud.

At least Rose had thought to waterproof her desk before anything could happen to the paperwork on it, a useful spell she'd learned from her mother. Clare didn't seem to be thinking along those lines, so Rose braved the rain (the cloud had switched from hail again. It was a capricious thing, that cloud) to dash across the room and come to her aid.

"Clare! Move away from the desk!" she shouted, trying to be heard over the roaring winds which were starting now. She was fairly sure clouds didn't _make_ wind, but presumably the person who'd created it wasn't up to speed on their nephrology. Rose took back all nice thought she'd ever had about the cloud being maybe a little bit cute. It was obviously a ferocious beast, like a Blast-Ended Skrewt.

Clare looked up at Rose with huge eyes, which seemed to be asking her if she had lost her mind. "Have you lost your mind?!" she shouted back. Rose was glad to note her eye-reading skills were still as sharp as ever.

"I'll cast a spell, but you need to let go!"

The whole thing was starting to feel a lot like a Muggle movie her mother had made her watch once, Titan-something. Someone let someone else go on a floating door, and it was all very dramatic and also illogical. Surely there was enough space for both of them on the door?

Yes, this situation was starting to feel a lot like that.

Hesitantly, Clare straightened herself and Rose pointed her wand at the desk, shouting "Impervius!" A slight sheen appeared over the paperwork for a moment, but then it settled. Clare looked on in amazement, like she had forgotten she knew how to do magic for a moment and couldn't figure out why _she_ didn't think to do that.

"Come on, in here!" Rose grabbed the older woman and dragged her into the room next to her desk. Which just happened to be Draco Malfoy's office. Where he had been sitting, undisturbed, until two haggard-looking women burst through his door and let a ferocious wind blow all his paperwork off his desk.

"What the-" Rose hastily closed the door and turned to glare at him.

"Excuse me, Mister Malfoy, but there seems to be a bit of an issue in the bullpen. As head of the department, it might be a good idea for you to have a look."

Malfoy quickly rose and strode over to the door, opening it just an inch. The winds had obviously picked up, and it took all three of them to close the door again.

Draco rushed over to his shelves, which were filled with books and various trinkets, and retrieved a green leather-bound volume. Flipping through it, he started mumbling to himself. "Merlin's beard. Who did this? I bet it was that Huntley, you make _one _joke about the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and then _this_ happens. 'S not my fault I didn't know his sister was the Head, it is? They had different last names! Who does that?"

"Married people? Step-siblings?" Rose suggested, unhelpfully.

Draco stopped his frantic page-turning to glare at her. She just shrugged. Obviously her acute logical thinking was not appreciated.

"Ah! Found it!" he yelled, turning to a page which did indeed seem to have an illustration of a cloud on it. He skimmed it quickly and plucked his wand from the pocket of his robes. He nodded once, sharply, and walked back to the door. "Stand back!"

Clare and Rose moved a safe distance away from where they could still hear the winds howling outside the door. Draco swung open the door, pointed his wand at the now massive cloud, and shouted "Fingurum!"

Just like that, the cloud imploded in on itself, and disappeared.

"Well, that was easy," the Hitwizard from before mumbled. He was soaked and his hair looked like a bird and tried to build a nest in it.

"If it was so easy, why didn't _you _manage it?" Draco snapped, his full Malfoy viscousness coming out. He hated Hitwizards, with their smug 'holier than thou' attitude and their annoyingly lilac robes. Just because they occasionally ended up in St. Mungo's, that didn't mean they could belittle his very impressive cloud-combatting skills.

The boy burned bright red and fled the room. Draco smirked. There was nothing he enjoyed more than intimidating newbies, especially those from the Magical Law Enforcement Squad.

"Okay, get back to work, everyone. I have a feeling it might take you a while to pick up all these papers."

Rose stepped out Malfoy's office and sighed. The room looked like - well, like a storm had blown through it. Which it had. Her and Clare's papers may be dry, but it was still going to her ages to find them again. Grumbling, all the employees of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Head Office pointed to different parts of the room, and all the parchment started flying around their heads. Rose ducked just in time to avoid what would have been a particularly nasty full-face paper cut from a flying stack of soaking papers.

"Weasley!" a shout came from within Malfoy's office. Rose turned around and looked through the door.

"Yes, sir?"

"I need you to fill out a report on this. Mention that, while not _yet_ confirmed, Artemis Huntley is a prime suspect. Make sure to stress the _yet_." he growled, grabbing a piece of parchment and furiously scribbling something down. Rose spared a moment's though for Artemis Huntley, who, guilty or not, would probably shortly be receiving a very angry memo from one Draco Malfoy.

The rest of the day passed in relative peace, and if nothing else, at least Rose's first day had been _eventful_.


End file.
